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I am a new home owner and I am very new to lawn care. When I purchased the house I didn't see any weeds, but when I left for a few months for work and got back in December I noticed that weeds were starting to take over our back yard. When I went to lowes they recommended image concentrate so I tested out an area and waited a while and nothing happened. I went back to lowes and somebody else recommended that I try spectracide weed stop concentrate, it's been about two weeks since I've used that and the weeds look exactly the same. It's been pretty cold the past couple of weeks so I'm wondering if maybe that's why I didn't get any results. Both times I made sure to spray in the middle of the day since it's a little warmer around that time and when there was no rain in the forecast for a few days. I dig out the weeds whenever I get a chance but there are so many weeds that I don't know if I have time to get them all. Any advice would be greatly appreciated and very helpful.
Do you know what kind of grass you have? Assuming you have one of the typical southern lawn grasses, get a bag of Scott's Weed and Feed for Southern Lawns. You can use a cheaper brand, if you want, but Scott's is the best. Put it on the lawn in March and then follow up with subsequent applications according to the instructions on the bag.
It is not an instantaneous process, but one that works as the healthy grass chokes out the weeds. You want to get a deep healthy root system on the grass, and it will spread and choke out the weeds at the same time that the weeds are being killed. You might also spread some grass seed in the spring or fall.
If you only treat the weeds on a spot basis, all you will do is create bare spots.
You need to wait until the weeds are actively growing before spraying. That will give you the best results in the long run, and I'd suspect that's why you aren't seeing results. Image can take up to 5 weeks to work, but the spectracide has 2,4-D in it and you should have seen curling of the leaves within a couple days and death in a couple weeks.
I prefer spraying to weed and feed, just because you can get a better kill and apply the spray exactly when you want to. If you have a smaller yard, it's not hard to do with a handheld or hose end sprayer.
Weed and feed works too. I tend to differ on Scotts being the best - what they are the best at is taking a commodity product and aggressively marketing it such that consumers think there is a value associated with the brand name. You can easily compare fertilizers based on the labels - look for the nutrient levels and active herbicide ingredients. Then you can make an informed decision based on the price/performance benefits.
If someone moved in next to me and their first step was to pour chemicals all over the lawn, I'd be pissed. OP are you a real poster or do you work for an herbicide company? My advice is leave the poor weeds alone and just mow them. They won't kill you and some may be natives, beneficial plants or host plants for beneficial insects.
My advice is to take the chemicals back to the store. They aren't working for you anyway, it would seem. Then scratch or aerate the lawn and throw down some grass seed. You can mow weeds just fine and have a nice green lawn.
My two cents. BTW this is the garden forum, not the chemical and toxin forum. :runs and hides:
You need to wait until the weeds are actively growing before spraying. That will give you the best results in the long run, and I'd suspect that's why you aren't seeing results. Image can take up to 5 weeks to work, but the spectracide has 2,4-D in it and you should have seen curling of the leaves within a couple days and death in a couple weeks.
I prefer spraying to weed and feed, just because you can get a better kill and apply the spray exactly when you want to. If you have a smaller yard, it's not hard to do with a handheld or hose end sprayer.
Weed and feed works too. I tend to differ on Scotts being the best - what they are the best at is taking a commodity product and aggressively marketing it such that consumers think there is a value associated with the brand name. You can easily compare fertilizers based on the labels - look for the nutrient levels and active herbicide ingredients. Then you can make an informed decision based on the price/performance benefits.
YES!!! Spraying dormant weeds does no good. Also, if you can get your hands on Cotton Seed Meal and apply it as a pre-emergent you will eventually get rid of all your weeds in a totally safe, non-chemical organic way.
Perhaps you were thinking of corn gluten meal. However...
Quote:
Dr. Nick Christians... is credited with developing corn gluten meal as a pre-emergent lawn herbicide. His product kills the dicot weeds (clover, plantain, dandelions etc.) before they grow to adult size. The weed seeds actually do germinate, but the corn gluten meal inhibits the expansion of the plants’ roots and they quickly die of dehydration. So far, so good.
Iowa State’s own research on the subject, however, shows that to achieve anything close to full control requires the application of at least 20 pounds of corn gluten meal per 1,000 square feet — at exactly the right time in the spring — just before the weed seeds germinate. Corn gluten meal doesn’t inhibit weeds that already have root systems; in fact it makes fully formed weeds grown even faster due to the nitrogen content of the product.
...I wrote a whole chapter in my book about weed control that had very little about corn gluten meal, for all the reasons stated above. If your lawn is mostly weeds, it’s because your soil wants to grow weeds and not grass. The sustainable way to manage weeds on the lawn is to change the soil conditions so the soil wants to grow grass... Other weed control factors include: 1) mowing height, the taller the grass, the fewer the weeds; 2) avoiding raking in spring so weed seeds don’t get stirred up and germinate; 3) overseeding whenever thin or bare spots appear on the lawn; 4) pulling or spot spraying weeds with organic herbicides when necessary.
I am a new home owner and I am very new to lawn care. When I purchased the house I didn't see any weeds, but when I left for a few months for work and got back in December I noticed that weeds were starting to take over our back yard. When I went to lowes they recommended image concentrate so I tested out an area and waited a while and nothing happened. I went back to lowes and somebody else recommended that I try spectracide weed stop concentrate, it's been about two weeks since I've used that and the weeds look exactly the same. It's been pretty cold the past couple of weeks so I'm wondering if maybe that's why I didn't get any results. Both times I made sure to spray in the middle of the day since it's a little warmer around that time and when there was no rain in the forecast for a few days. I dig out the weeds whenever I get a chance but there are so many weeds that I don't know if I have time to get them all. Any advice would be greatly appreciated and very helpful.
Last edited by movin2Reston; 02-20-2016 at 03:22 PM..
Image should have worked in about a week if the plants were growing, but it only kills the youngest parts of the plants--new leaves, shoots, and roots. The old part of the plant would take longer to kill but it eventually would die of starvation. The spectracide kills the existing leaves, but not necessarily leaf buds, a completely different way of working. Spectracide works best on sunshiny days. If you use either of these at the proper dilution you should get a noticeable response. The spectracide will look like more killing is occuring because it sort of fries the leaves, but actually the image will prevent any regrowth and give better weed control in the long run.
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